Japanese school kids to get iPhones and virtual disease

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The Japanese government is working with the mobile network company Softbank Mobile to create and monitor the virtual spread of disease among children and then into the wider population.

The idea behind the experiment is to see whether a pandemic could be limited through the use of mobile phones and communication networks. To test this Softbank will select a school with around 1,000 children and give each of them an iPhone to carry around.

Their movements will be monitored through GPS 24/7 and after a few days of use a virtual infection will be transmitted to a few of the children. That infection is be on the phone and will then be transmitted to other children’s phones if they come into close contact. When they go home their parents may also become infected.

The plan is that when an infection is detected a message will be sent to the parents telling them to go and see a doctor in an attempt to limit the further spread of infection from that family. Limiting the infection spread even slightly can have a major impact on how many people eventually get sick.

The Japanese government has 24 different trials currently planned or in progress to see how its current mobile network and communication options can be used to track, monitor, and limit disease. It is hoped that by utilizing these resources the spread of infection such as the current Swine Flu threat can be limited and controlled in the future.

Matthew’s Opinion
The Japanese seem to like giving away iPhones and Softbank only recently gave away 550 of them to students and teachers at Aoyama Gajuin University. This latest experiment will use double that number of phones and I’m sure the children hope they get to keep the devices after the experiment is over.

It is an experiment that could gather a lot of information about how an infection spreads and a school is a great place to start because there is so much contact between different people and then different families all living in a relatively small area of the country. The results won’t be perfect because not every person the children come into contact with will have a phone that can become infected.

What isn’t clear is how in a real situation it would be known the person is infected and ill. In the experiment it is the phone that carries the virus so it is easy to pass on to another phone. When it is a real person then there is no way to track how it moves to another person unless the individuals involved report it.